Tests at the recently discovered Ghazal gas field in Saudi Arabia yielded a daily output of 40 million cubic feet of gas, Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf announced Friday.

"The Ghazal field, 150 kilometers (95 miles) east of Riyadh, has been tested, and an output of 40 million cubic feet (1.2 million cubic meters) per day and 5,400 barrels of day of condensate was achieved," Assad said, quoted by the official SPA news agency.

The Ghazal field is the eighth gas field to have been found in the eastern part of the kingdom, SPA said.

Saudi Aramco, which carried out the tests, holds a monopoly on oil and gas extraction in the country, which is the world's biggest producer of crude, with more than eight million barrels a day, and has the biggest reserves, put officially at 261 billion barrels.

Last December Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi announced the discovery of two new gas fields in the east of the country, with total reserves of 120 billion cubic meters of gas, and six billion barrels of condensate.

Its known gas reserves are the fourth largest in the region, after Iran, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. In January 1999, Nuaimi put them 5,776 billion cubic meters, up seven percent in two years.

Last year Riyadh opened the door to foreign firms to take part in the exploitation of the kingdom's oil and gas resources. - (AFP)